Afternoon Tidbit: Oprah Winfrey

Real estate reporter (and former celebrity property gossip) Bob Goldsborough at The Chicago Tribune revealed today in his Elite Street column that daytime chat show hostess and media mogul Oprah Winfrey has put one of her Chicago condominiums up for sale with a $2,800,000 price tag.

Not only did Miz Winfrey pay $5,600,000 for the full-floor, lake-view spread in Chicago's upscale Streeterville 'hood in 2006, she never even moved in, put it out for lease last year at fifteen grand a month and now she's willing to take a multi-million dollar loss just to get rid of the damn thing.

The new and current price means that even if someone comes along and pays the billionairess the full $2,800,000 asking price, she's still facing a $2,800,000 loss not counting carrying costs, taxes, maintenance charges and real estate fees. Not that she can't afford such a loss, but still a multi-million dollar loss is a mulit-million dollar loss even if it is just couch-cushion change for a billionaire like Miz Winfrey.

Your Mama has dissed and discussed the 13-room sprawler that spreads out over 4,607 square feet on the sixth floor of a beauteous Beaux Arts building. Iffin yer innerested in our thoughts about the apartment you can go here (with photographs and floor plan) and/or here and/or here.

Miz Winfrey has long-owned a multi-unit combination duplex atop Water Tower Place in Chicago but since her television network (OWN) is headquartered in Los Angeles she accordingly spends more and more of her time farther west at The Promised Land, her 40-acre estate in Montecito (CA) and her farm in Hawaii.

Your Mama imagines if the lady can indeed make this network of hers work for the long haul she'll snatch up a private and pricey bolt hole in Los Angeles where she can stay when she doesn't feel like shacking up in a 5-star hotel or commuting back and forth to The Promised Land via chauffeured car or helicopter. We shall see, kittens, we shall see.

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